


the way the guillotine wears gravity

by beardsley



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:06:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first day of teaching when he's walking to his first class that morning, with boys who look so impossibly young even though Steve is barely out of college himself, he feels like he's walking to his own execution.</p><p>Funny how that works out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way the guillotine wears gravity

**Author's Note:**

> \- aka the story where Bucky quotes Auden to get in Steve's pants.  
> \- a lot of this is haipollai's fault; she kept enabling me instead of telling me to shut up.  
> \- title from Andrea Gibson.
> 
>  **warning** for underage sex and teacher/student relationships.

Deputy headmaster Stark, who has a lot more years under his belt, tells Steve this: 'If you survive the first two or three terms, seriously, you'll be fine.'

The first day of teaching when he's walking to his first class that morning, with boys who look so impossibly young even though Steve is barely out of college himself, he feels like he's walking to his own execution.

Funny how that works out.

~

James Barnes transfers to the St Dominic Savio Academy in the last term of his final year. His father is a military man, and travels a lot; he wants his son to have an education, but leaves him at the private school like a piece of luggage to be looked after for as long as money will allow.

Barnes' friends call him Bucky. He's reckless and too smart for his own good, though it doesn't show in his grades. History is his best subject; history and English and French.

~

To be honest, _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ isn't Steve's favourite painting — but he likes talking about it. Even at an all-male school, he thinks it's important to teach about its context and about Artemisia Gentileschi: women like her, throughout history, have always been pushed to the margins. They shouldn't be.

It's his third class of the day, and after spending two hours trying to convince incredibly uninterested fifteen-year-olds that Impressionism is worth a damn, it's downright satisfying — if not exactly enjoyable — to get into the ugly, darker side of art history. Everyone knows Van Gogh cut off his own ear, but people like to forget that Caravaggio was a murderer.

The boys listen to him, eyes wide, and Steve knows he's making an impression. Good; _Judith Beheading Holofernes_ is the kind of art that should stay with you. Finally, one of them raises his hand. Steve smiles encouragingly and nods at him to go ahead.

'Why didn't she just kill the bastard?' the kid asks. There are a few snorts, and then expectant silence as twenty teenagers turn their whole attention to Steve.

And Steve, oh, he's been waiting for this moment. He stands before the boy who asked the question, and taps the textbook open before him, where Gentileschi's painting is taking one whole page.

'She did,' he says, before moving back to have the whole classroom in his field of vision. He looks the kids in the eye, one after another. 'Don't you see? Look at the painting,' and Steve smiles again as twenty sets of eyes drop to their textbooks with renewed interest. 'She kills him. She cuts his throat. And more than that, this is what history will remember his as. Artemisia Gentileschi is more than her assault; she's a brilliant artist. But Agostino Tassi is only, and forever, a monster. She killed him.'

That's when he realises one of the students isn't looking down at his textbook, but up at Steve.

In the last row, the desk closest to the window. Steve has seen him around the halls, and on the lacrosse field. His tie is a little loose, the collar of his uniform shirt undone in a clear violation of school regulations. Their eyes meet, and the boy smirks, and Steve smirks back, doesn't even think about it.

In retrospect, he should have thought about it.

The boy is loitering outside Steve's classroom after the class is finished. Steve nearly knocks into him, arms full of supplies and papers. He stops himself at the last moment, and avoids a headfirst collision.

'Did you need something, Mr…?'

'Barnes,' the boy says. Right, Steve remembers now; that would be James Barnes, top of his class in history and English and French if the staff room gossip is anything to go by. A heart breaker and a cocky bastard, apparently, and his sweetly innocent smile is enough to tell Steve that — yeah, this boy is trouble.

'That was cool, sir, what you did,' Barnes says. 'Make 'em focus on the grisly details so they forget they're learning all about the Italian Baroque. Pretty unmanly period.'

Steve raises his eyebrows. 'Did you come to an art history class expecting manly?'

'Not really,' Barnes admits. He grins. 'I came in expecting interesting. Maybe even a challenge.' He leans in, and with their height difference he ends up peering up at Steve from under his eyelashes. Steve, not sure why, feels the back of his neck get a little warmer.

'You're gonna be disappointed on both counts, Mr Barnes. Art history is just art history.'

Barnes' grin gets an edge to it, and Steve will later learn — through experience — that it's an edge of danger.

'I don't think so.'

~

So does it start then, in front of Steve's classroom? No, of course not. That'd be too easy. There are a lot of students Steve is comfortable enough to joke around, especially in years twelve and thirteen. They say it's just fair, since Steve is only about ten minutes older than them. Steve rolls his eyes, but he's a little pleased, too. Deputy headmaster Stark, Ms Drew, Mr Fury; they all told him that nothing makes you feel as old as teaching: that students view all of their teachers as ancient relics, no matter how old they actually are.

Steve is glad he can be a friend to some of the boys more than an authority figure. They come to him sometimes with things that are completely unrelated to coursework or art history; they come to him because they trust him more than their prefects, or anyone else on staff. Helping makes him feel like he's doing something right.

Later, he hopes it might make up for the things he's doing that are wrong, so wrong.

~

Smoking on school grounds is strictly forbidden, save for the staff lounge. When Steve sees a trail of smoke from behind the bike shed, he laughs to himself. If it's anyone below the age of fifteen, he's bringing them straight to the headmaster's office. If not, they're gonna get a lecture anyway.

He sneaks up behind the shed, and knocks on the half-open door. There's a rustle inside, a hollow thunk (elbow connecting with the door?), and:

'Shit! Fuck, shit, _ow_.'

Steve pushes the door open and crosses his arms over his chest. 'Language, Mr Barnes. Seriously.'

Barnes glares at him. 'I'm pretty sure giving pupils heart attacks is _not okay_ , sir,' he accuses. He's rubbing the palm of his hand, as if he burned himself, and the butt of his cigarette is on the ground. He puts it out with the heel of his boot.

'I'm pretty sure it's even less okay for you to be smoking in here,' Steve counters. He leans in the doorway, and smiles just enough to make sure Barnes doesn't spook or anything. 'Just be glad it's me and not Mr Fury.'

Barnes shudders theatrically. 'Christ, he'd have me flogged.' He reaches into his uniform jacket and takes out a pack and a lighter, and pays no attention to Steve's pained expression.

'So your last lecture,' he says. 'Did Podkowinski really cut up that painting with the dame?'

It makes Steve smile. The students were more than a little horrified (and giggly) when Steve used the phrase _thought to represent the female climax_ , and somehow the fact that Barnes would rather talk around that is sort of amusing. Out of all of his older students, Steve would have thought Barnes to be the least impressed by sexuality in art.

'La Folie? Yeah,' he says. 'Just five weeks after it was first shown. Why?'

Barnes shrugs. 'It's interesting. To be so possessive of something you'd rather tear it apart than share with other people. _Composed like them of Eros and of dust_ , all that.'

'I — what?'

'Oh.' Barnes grins. 'That'd be Auden, sir. Seems fitting. Ms Drew has us memorise his stuff, among other things. He's queer, you know.'

'Yeah, I do know,' Steve says, looking away. 'That doesn't take away from his worth as a —'

'Poet, yeah, didn't mean it like that.' Barnes frowns, sucks on the cigarette and breathes out smoke. When he speaks again, his voice is soft, intimate. ' _Inherit me, my cause, as I would cause you now with mine your sudden joy_ ,' he cites, and looks up. He looks Steve straight in the eye, and there's something there that makes Steve swallow, that makes him want to take a step back. Or a step forward.

' _Two wonders as one vow_ ,' Steve finishes, surprised at how low it comes out. ' _Preempting all, here, there, for ever, long ago_.'

He wants to say something else, maybe backpedal and make this — less, somehow. Less tense, or less anticipatory. But then there's the distinct sound of footsteps, and Barnes leans past Steve to look around the corner, then swears under his breath. He grabs Steve by the collar and drags him into the shed, and half on instinct Steve kicks the door closed.

'Who is it?' Steve asks, barely above a whisper. Barnes just shakes his head, so Steve doesn't push.

They wait for the footsteps to quiet down as they're farther and farther away, and only then does Barnes relax. He lets go of Steve and leans back, but that only means they're three feet apart, if that. Steve reaches out to take the cigarette from Barnes' mouth and inhales, deep and long, to calm his nerves. He doesn't know why he's nervous, except maybe he thinks he does. It's just that he'd rather not.

Barnes watches him, biting his lip, like he can't tear his eyes away. Steve takes another drag, and then Barnes is taking the cigarette from him, the pads of his fingers brushing over Steve's lower lip. He inhales and throws the cigarette to the ground. His free hand fists in the front of Steve's shirt, and he pulls Steve down, pulls him in. Steve is taller; he has to put his hand next to Barnes' head to support himself, but then he's not thinking about anything, anything at all, because Barnes' mouth is on his.

This is wrong, and a terrible idea, and Steve makes a soft sound at the back of his throat and presses closer. He expects Barnes to smirk, but that doesn't happen; what happens is that Barnes licks his mouth open, slow like they have all the time in the world, and exhales smoke between Steve's lips, followed by the hot slide of tongue. It's bitter, smell and taste both, but Steve wants more. He crowds Barnes against the wall and lets the kiss get deeper, blood roaring in his ears and Barnes' hands scalding as he hooks his fingers into the waistband of Steve's pants.

This is wrong, Steve knows, but there is something about Barnes that makes Steve want to not care. Maybe the dangerous twist of his mouth, or the way he looks up at Steve from the last row of desks and it's like there's just the two of them in a classroom, and Steve wants to be interesting, he wants to be a challenge.

One final, lingering kiss and Steve takes a step back; Barnes lets him go with a noise of protest.

A part of Steve, the part that forces his heart to beat so fast Steve thinks he might pass out, screams at him to take it all back. A part of him is terrified.

'That — I. Barnes, I don't —'

Barnes' smile, right then, isn't very comforting; it looks strained. 'I think you should call me Bucky,' he says.

~

This, right then, with cigarette smoke still clinging to the roof of Steve's mouth. This is how it starts.

~

He catches Barnes — all right, Bucky — after Thursday art history. Steve doesn't touch him, doesn't even look at him, and no one pays them any attention when Steve says, 'Mr Barnes, I need to talk to you about your essay.'

'My essay,' Bucky repeats once they're alone in the classroom. He leans against Steve's desk, arms crossed, and Steve is aching with how much he wants to drag him to the workshop and lock the door and peel him out of his uniform, though maybe keep the tie.

He clears his throat. 'Look, about what happened in the —'

'Oh, Christ.' Bucky scowls. 'Is this gonna be your it-was-a-mistake, never-gonna-happen-again speech? Cause if it is, fucking save it.'

Sighing, Steve tries to keep control of himself — as opposed to, for example, focussing on the way Bucky's hips are canted forward, close enough Steve could reach out and touch if he wanted, and oh, god, he wants. He rubs the bridge of his nose.

'It _was_ a mistake,' he says, not looking at Bucky. 'And it _won't_ happen again. And I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking.'

'How about that you're like Auden?' Bucky asks. 'I'd be fine with that. More than fine.'

'You're a student,' Steve says, almost pleading. 'It'll pass, it's just a —'

'Phase,' Bucky cuts in, and Steve closes his mouth with an audible click. 'Yeah, heard it all before. Unhealthy phase, outlet for hormones, brought on by forced proximity to my own gender. Except I don't care if it ever fucking passes. Did it pass for you?'

Steve shakes his head, mutely. Of course it damn well didn't pass for him, not everyone is that lucky.

'I graduate in two months,' Bucky says. He moves closer, but when Steve shakes his head again he stops. 'Two months. Out there, in the real world, no one will care that I was your student.'

Steve looks up at him. His jaw is set, and he looks so certain, and all it does is remind Steve that he's young and reckless and doesn't know _shit_ about how the real world works, and just how welcoming it isn't to people like them. Steve hasn't been there for any raids, but there was one bar in Brooklyn he'd gone to sometimes; he knows it's not there any more, and he knows all the people who frequented it had their names posted in a newspaper, just to shame them.

But Steve doesn't know how to tell Bucky that, so he just says, 'All right. You graduate in two months, you can wait that long. And after you graduate, if you still want this? Fine. I'll be here. Come back to me when you're not my student.'

'Fine,' Bucky snaps. 'Fucking _fine_.' He doesn't storm off, just walks away, and he closes the door quietly and carefully behind himself, like he's hoping Steve won't think of him as a moody teenager.

~

Maybe the reason he's adamant about Bucky graduating before they do anything about what they both know hangs between them, heavy and taut with tension, is because he knows then Bucky won't want him any longer. He said so himself: it's about the challenge. An affair with a teacher, sure, that's a challenge. But once he's not Steve's student, there won't be anything to hold his interest.

So he makes up rules in his head, to keep sane. He promises himself he won't ever, ever compromise his ethical standing as a teacher; that he won't ever, ever abuse the power he has over his students. He promises himself —

~

The closet is too small, and the single bare bulb above them makes it seem even smaller. Next to where Steve is kneeling on the floor is Bucky's discarded cigarette, only half-finished, and Steve should probably care more that he might get burnt. The smoke is still in the air, but Steve doesn't register it above the smell of sweat and spunk, and he can't even focus on anything except the way Bucky's fingers are tight in his hair, too tight, though still not enough to properly hold him in place.

'Jesus fucking Christ,' Bucky manages, voice hoarse. With his hands on Bucky's thighs Steve can feel them shaking, and Bucky's hips come off the wall and he pushes deeper into Steve's mouth. Steve takes it, fighting past his gag reflex. God, he wants more. He wants to do all the filthy things Bucky promised to let him, all the things Steve said he never would.

Bucky comes with a choked-back moan, salty on Steve's tongue. Steve lets him go and waits for Bucky to come down a little before doing up his zipper.

'Fuck,' Bucky gasps, trying to get his breathing under control. ' _Fuck_.'

'Watch your language, and be glad I'm not your English teacher,' Steve says before he can stop himself. It doesn't even feel that funny, and he regrets the words as soon as they leave him mouth. He thought maybe he was ready to joke about this, but he's not. The lock in the closet door doesn't give them a lot of protection, and at the back of Steve's mind there's a constant background noise of terror.

But Bucky snorts. He runs his hands through Steve's hair, and settles them on his shoulders. Steve leans back to look at him, at his flushed cheeks and pleased smirk and bright eyes. The collar of his shirt is undone, the tie loose, and there's nothing left of his posturing and overblown attitude problem.

'Come up here,' he says, and Steve does. His knees are a little sore. When he straightens, he's some five or six inches taller and with the two of them standing so close, Bucky has to tilt his head up to keep looking at Steve. He curls his fingers around the back of Steve's neck and pulls him down, and presses his mouth to Steve's.

It's softer than any of the other times they've kissed, and it could break Steve's heart. Bucky catches his lower lip between his teeth and pulls, smiling, before licking back into Steve's mouth. He makes a happy, content noise at the back of his throat, and just as Steve starts to relax into it Bucky cups Steve's erection through his pants.

Something like an electric shock goes through Steve, and he takes a step back. 'No,' he says.

Bucky blinks in open confusion. 'What?'

'No,' Steve repeats, this time with more feeling. 'We — I can't, I'm sorry.' That part is the truth, he is sorry and he wants nothing more than for Bucky to touch him, and Steve knows it makes him a disgusting human being.

'You can't be fucking serious,' Bucky says, and closes the distance between them again. He levels Steve with a scowl. The twist of his mouth is cold and angry. 'This is unbelievable. So you'll get down on your knees and suck off a student, but god forbid that same student touches your dick?'

'That's not it,' Steve says, even though it is.

Bucky must see it too. He sets his jaw. 'Right, yeah. You think that makes you less guilty? You gonna pretend it doesn't count if you don't get off?'

He opens his mouth to say more, but shuts up when Steve grabs him by the arm. Even this touch feels tainted, now; the illusion that whatever was going on was in any way all right is gone. Reality is a harsh mistress.

'Excuse me for having second goddamn thoughts,' Steve growls, pushing Bucky against the wall again to crowd him there, get in his space. 'I'm the only one here who'd get sentenced to hard labour if someone found out.'

'Is that it?' Bucky demands. He doesn't let Steve stare him down. 'Is that what this is about? You're scared?'

' _Yes_ ,' Steve says, willing Bucky to understand. 'Aren't you?'

Bucky shrugs with one shoulder, the one Steve doesn't have a tight grip on. Belatedly, Steve lets him go. 'Sure,' says Bucky. 'I'm scared. But for one thing, if someone found out about this they wouldn't care what _exactly_ you did to me, you'd be dead anyway, so what the fuck does it matter? And for another —' Bucky moves closer, hands inching under the hem of Steve's untucked shirt. 'For another, I want to go down on you more than I'm scared.'

'No.' Steve grabs Bucky's wrists, but instead of pushing him away he just keeps him in place. 'I'm serious. I —'

The rest is drowned out by the bell announcing lunchtime. Bucky and Steve jump apart, wide-eyed. The hallway will be filled with people in a moment; without another word Bucky fixes his tie and flees from the closet.

Steve waits longer than is necessary, sitting atop a bucket with his face in his hands. Trying not to think about the taste still lingering in his mouth is a lost cause, so Steve closes his eyes and lets himself remember.

~

He promises he won't compromise his ethical standing as a teacher, that he won't abuse the power he has over his students. He breaks that promise, so instead he promises himself he won't ever, ever touch Bucky in an untoward way. He —

~

Bucky is with a group of friends when Steve passes them in the hall. Their eyes don't meet.

When Steve walks past them, he feels Bucky's fingers touch his. Just for a second, and if anyone saw it would look like an accident.

Steve ducks his head to hide his smile, and keeps walking.

~

He breaks all of his promises, one after another.

Does he expect Bucky to keep his word and come back to Steve after he graduates? No. He doesn't. He's not naive, and anyway, expecting and hoping are two different things.

Steve knows something else, though. The final week of term, he composes a polite resignation letter in his head. He thinks the best — least dishonest — way to bow out would be to cite personal reasons. It's the truth, after all. His reasons are the most personal he can think of, and he can't keep teaching at the St Dominic Savio Academy. He broke the rules: he violated them with little care, he abused his position and he made a sick joke of his authority as a teacher. It's not an easy decision, but Steve knows it's right. He'll miss teaching, but if there's a shred of ethics he can cling to, he will.

~

Bucky sits his entrance exams, and when he comes back he locks the door to the workshop behind himself and gets down on his knees. He sucks Steve off with single-minded determination, moaning out loud when Steve tangles his fingers in his hair. Steve doesn't want to wonder if he's ever done this with anyone else. He doesn't want to wonder if he's taking something from Bucky that shouldn't be his to take, and he doesn't want to wonder if he damages Bucky in some fundamental way.

He wonders, instead, if Bucky would let him sketch the line of his back, the twist of his mouth and his bright eyes, in ink or charcoal. He wonders if Bucky is what he's been missing, the thing he needs to feel the spark of creative passion that seeped out of him when he focussed on art history instead of art, alone. He can't tear his eyes away from Bucky's fingers, the bruised knuckles of his left hand, the shapes he's painting in the air when he talks — Steve wants to commit it all to memory, and he wants to fill all the sketchbooks he still hangs on to, after years of not drawing anything at all.

In the paper he reads the next morning in the staff lounge, there is a scathing review of Nabokov's last novel. Steve knows the school library ordered a copy, but he doesn't have the courage to read it.

~

He doesn't see Bucky at the graduation ceremony. The other teachers speak proudly of all the colleges their favourite pupils applied to, and their chances to get in. Ms Drew talks about Bucky as definite Ivy League material, a bright young mind that would bring a breath of fresh air to the English, French or History departments, whichever he chooses.

Steve gives his resignation letter to the headmaster and politely but firmly declines his offer of a raise. It's not about the salary, he explains. It's about his guilty conscience, he doesn't say.

~

He comes back to New York with enough money saved to live on for a few months, but in absence of quarters provided by the school, he finds he has no place to live.

'I don't understand why you'd give up a job like that,' Sharon says when he shows up on her doorstep with just the clothes on his back and a bag full of art history textbooks and half-finished sketches, all in charcoal. 'You were lucky enough to get it in the first place.'

But she doesn't push, and she lets him in and offers him tea. Steve notices there is two of everything in the kitchen: two dirty dishes in the sink, two empty coffee cups, two sets of cutlery. Two places at the table that look used most often. It makes him nostalgic for the past. But Sharon doesn't look at him the way she used to, there's nothing beyond a friend's concern in her expression, and Steve doesn't think there's anything of the old flame left in him, either.

'I live with a friend,' she says, following Steve's gaze to the closed bedroom door. 'She's from Russia, so we have to lay low.'

She levels Steve with a pointed look, and he understands. He wasn't there for the bar raids; Sharon was. A Russian immigrant would raise all sorts of unwanted questions anyway, with the newspapers and that idiotic senator's vicious hunt for the _communist element_ , but here, like that, the danger is doubled. Steve nods. He understands.

He spends the next two weeks sending out job applications. It feels like cheating to use the shining letter of reference he got from the Academy, but he needs to eat and he wants to pay Sharon back for the water, heating and the room she gave him for the time being. He meets the Russian friend: a lovely woman, not too fond of pointless small talk and deadpan in a way that fits so well with Sharon's irritable demeanour.

~

It's two months, and Steve has a part time job typing up scripts and reports for the newsrooms at CBS. He doesn't talk about Gentileschi or Podkowinski, and the only time he hears Auden is one time on the radio, à propos of something completely unrelated. War, he thinks. _We must love one another or die_.

It's two months; he comes home before seven, with a rolled up newspaper under one arm. He circled four or five classifieds advertising apartments in Brooklyn.

It's two months, and as Steve kicks off his boots he sees a beat-up army bag on the couch. Frowning, he walks into the kitchen. Despite the open window it's filled with cigarette smoke, and at the table Sharon is laughing and opposite her sits Bucky, chin in hands and grinning.

Steve drops his briefcase.

They both turn towards him; Sharon still smiling, and Bucky — a little nervous, the edge of his smirk a little tight.

'Your boy travelled all the way from Indiana, you know,' Sharon says.

'He's not my boy,' says Steve, wincing.

Sharon smiles wider. 'Right.' She gets up, pats Bucky on the arm and on her way out of the kitchen she nods at Steve. He's not sure if it's an absolution, and doesn't ask.

When it's just the two of them — it's not privacy, not really, but as close as it can get and Steve is glad anyway — Bucky's expression falls into something less put-on, something more honest but also something more vulnerable.

'I waited,' he says. 'You told me to come back to you, so here I am.'

'How did you find me?' Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. 'You left a forwarding address. I…might've broken into the records office.'

'You _what_?' Steve laughs helplessly. 'You could've just asked another teacher, they'd have told you.'

'Didn't want to risk it,' Bucky says, shrugging again. 'You gonna just stay there or what?'

Belatedly, Steve realises he's still standing in the doorway. He makes his way to take Sharon's place at the table, then notices his briefcase on the floor — and decides to ignore it. He watches Bucky, watches him put out his cigarette and fold his arms on the table. He hasn't changed, but he looks older in a plain shirt and with his hair a mess. School regulations must have been his own personal nemesis, Steve thinks fondly.

'I'd've thought you'd be settling in at Harvard by now,' he says, trying to make it gentle and not suspicious.

'I don't think I'm the learning type,' Bucky replies. 'I'll take hands-on experience over academia.'

Steve drops his eyes to the table.

'I graduated,' Bucky goes on. 'And I waited, and it didn't pass for me. I still want this. You said you'd be here if I did. Did you mean it?'

'Course I did,' Steve says, and if he feels like putting his face in his hands, no one has to know. He wants this, he's never wanted anything more in his entire life. He stopped trying to talk himself out of wanting this months ago, because really, against Bucky he never stood a chance. 'God, of _course_ I did.'

~

He draws Bucky in ink and charcoal, blue and black and sometimes red; he draws the line of his back and the twist of his mouth. He draws Bucky's hands, almost obsessively, never more than sketches that fill pages and pages. He draws Bucky from memory, and when he's propped up against the headboard and Bucky half-dozes on the other side of the bed, and they're both naked. It's his best work.

He presses his mouth to the inside of Bucky's palms, and to to the inside of his wrists just to feel the soft thrum of his heartbeat. Bucky likes to feel the pulse point under Steve's jaw, with the pads of his fingers or with his tongue, then trace it down to Steve's collar bone. He likes it when Steve pins his arms over his head and doesn't let up, even when Bucky begs.

He likes to do it straddling Steve's hips, rocking against him and Steve's hand on him, supporting himself with both hands on Steve's shoulders. And afterwards, he collapses next to Steve and kisses him, so deep and slow; Steve will never get used to it. He doesn't want to get used to it. He wants to find Bucky every day, over and over. He wants Bucky to never get bored with him.

'We could go somewhere,' Steve says, surprising himself a little; he meant to say something else entirely, though in retrospect he's not sure what.

Bucky props himself up on both elbows to look down at Steve. He raises one eyebrow. 'I'm gonna vote for France. And Morocco. I want to see lots of places, y'know.'

'My French is pretty terrible,' says Steve, throwing up one hand to cover his eyes; he's grinning like an idiot.

Bucky huffs a laugh. ' _Ouais, mais mon français est excellent_. Top of the class, remember?'

'I actually meant more, I don't know, weekend trip or something.'

'Aim high,' Bucky tells him, mock-earnest, before he leans in to kiss Steve. He bites Steve's lower lip, smiling. 'Fuck this place. I wanna see the world with you.'

~

Steve has enough money saved up to live on for a few months, or to travel for a lot longer. Bucky, as it turns out, left home with a roll of bills he says bitterly his father will miss more than him. Bucky has no credentials, but he's right: his French is perfect and his English even better, as long as he watches himself. Steve takes more pencils than he knows what to do with, and without a plan, without a map, they leave New York not two days later.

If it starts with cigarette smoke clinging to the roof of Steve's mouth, this has to be how it ends: asleep on a train, Bucky's legs thrown carelessly over Steve's thighs, his face turned away from the window and Steve only half-awake but smiling to himself. No bang, no whimper, just one untroubled sigh as he walks towards something that no longer feels like the end.


End file.
